About Me

Friday, 26 March 2010

Another sunny and warm day, no rain.

The lovely sunny and warm weather is good for doing anything ouside.... except gardening. It is that time of the year when planting for the winter crops in important. The soil is warm, I have added gypsum and some missing minerals, and the compost is ready to go. I have a few plants that are growing in polystyrene containers... these need thinning, and the surplus plants need to be transplanted into the garden. The problem is the serious lack of rain. It's not worth planting very much without serious rainfall, as I don't have enough water for much irrigation. A few days ago (Monday?) we had 1mm of rainfall, but that is irrelevant at this stage. Even after that 1mm of rain, when the ground smelled so good, the dust was stirred by the dogs running across the yard... not very inspiring when we are hanging out for rain.
Whenever it does rain, we need "follow-up rains" as well (do I sound like a farmer?) And we need rain, and preferably before the soil gets too cold for seed germination..
Yesterday I transferred a lot of water from the two tanks near the back shed to the "house" tank... and that is the same one that I water the garden from.... the few plants that are in the ground and "on the way" need daily watering now... the soil is very dry.
The house tank is now more than half full and the other two are down below half. A very rough estimate is that we have about 13,000 litres left (out of 27,000 at about nov/Dec... when the last serious rainfall happened.) We should have rain by June.
Today I transplanted some chicory and some kale, watered the seeds that should come up soon, and kept the half grown vegetables going as well.
While I was out there, I found another blood lily flower. If you compare this with the photograph from Tuesday, there is a fifth flower coming up...

I transplanted one very damaged bulb here three years ago, and now there are five, at least... so far.

While I was out there I heard the bronzewing again. I have been hearing it for a few weeks, but today I crept out there to see if I could find it.... it's in the pepper tree again...

... this was taken this afternoon, and it's a lovely bird. I can't find the other one, but I'm sure there is a pair. I can hear it!
There is a juvenile blackbird that is worrying about these pigeon invaders in the pepper tree... it is making an assortment of distress calls while the bronzewings sit there with their quiet contact calls... amazing to watch... better than television!